


The Woman In Black

by Orangistae



Category: Person of Interest (TV), Westworld (TV)
Genre: Alternate Season/Series 01, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Fix-It, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-12-29 22:51:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18303410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orangistae/pseuds/Orangistae
Summary: "I'm sorry,” Dolores said helplessly, “but do I know you?"The woman's mouth curled."Oh, sweetie," she said, stepping closer and raising her hand to Dolores's cheek, "yes, you do," and leaned in further until her hair brushed Dolores's shoulder and her breath tickled Dolores's ear."Remember...?"





	1. Chapter 1

Dolores walked down the street in a daze. Around her rose the sounds of laughter and clinking glasses, as finely dressed men and women stood talking together in small groups, a buzz of anticipation in the air. She slipped past them, unheeded. She didn't know what any of it was about or who these people were, but it didn’t matter. There was something else here, something important, tugging at her attention. The place, that’s what it was. Dolores blinked, letting the lights and noise of the party fade away, leaving her alone on the wide, packed-dirt street with its clapboard buildings. She didn’t remember ever having been here before, but something about the place resonated in her mind, familiar, like somewhere she had visited once in a dream. Or perhaps this was the dream—she wasn’t sure how she gotten here, or what she was supposed to be doing, and her mind felt murky and overfull if she tried to think about it. She didn’t think about it.

Letting instinct guide her steps, she crossed the main square, skirting around the mass of people who were starting to gather around a stage that had been set up there, and turned down a side street. She knew before she turned the corner what she would see, and yes, there it was, looming pale out of the darkness at the edge of town: the church. Just an ordinary, modest, white-painted church, but Dolores couldn’t take her eyes off it. Everything else seemed dull and insubstantial by comparison; the church was the only real thing, and it called to her, pulling her in.

"And this here is—whoa, careful, miss."

Dolores startled and found that, in her distraction, she had walked right into someone, a dark-haired man in dusty leathers who had apparently been leading some people on a tour of the town. She stepped back, flustered.

"Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry. I didn't notice you there."

"S'alright, no harm done." The man looked at her curiously. "Are you OK though, miss? You look a bit out of sorts, if you don't mind my saying."

"Yes, I'm fine, thank you. I was just preoccupied, that’s all."

"Well, you'd better pay more attention to where you're going, if you're gonna wander around by yourself like that—never know who might be lurking out here in the dark. Maybe you should—“

"Lawrence left Dolores alone and took his friends back to the party.”

Dolores turned. Standing at her side was a tall woman in a black dress, who smirked at the man—Lawrence?—as he nodded to the two of them and said, “I’ll be on my way then. You ladies have a nice evening.” He proceeded to round up his tour group and lead them away, back to the main square.

"Did you make him do that?” asked Dolores in wonder, but the woman in black didn’t seem to hear her. She was staring at Dolores, intent, her eyes gleaming brightly in the moonlight.

"Dolores," she sighed, with the reverence of a prayer. "It's so good to see you."

Dolores stared back at her, unsure how to respond. She didn’t recognize this woman at all, didn’t know how she knew Dolores’s name or why she was gazing at her with such familiarity; and yet she couldn't escape the visceral certainty that she _ought_ to recognize her.

"I'm sorry,” Dolores said helplessly, “but do I know you?"

The woman's mouth curled.

"Oh, sweetie," she said, stepping closer and raising her hand to Dolores's cheek, "yes, you do," and leaned in further until her hair brushed Dolores's shoulder and her breath tickled Dolores's ear.

" _Remember_...?"


	2. Chapter 2

Sweetwater was always full of activity, and today was no exception. People hurried about in every direction, talking, drinking, laughing, fighting, a familiar clamor to which Dolores paid little attention as she left the general store. She had packed her watercolors when she’d left home that morning, and now that she had finished her errands, she was thinking of going for a ride down by the river, and setting up at her favorite spot to do some painting.

She made her way down the street to where she’d left her horse, tied up outside the bakery, and started transferring her purchases into the saddlebags. There were slightly too many things to fit in easily, and it required a bit of shuffling to get them all packed away. As Dolores was doing this, one of the cans fell to the ground, and she turned to retrieve it, tracking it as it rolled away and then bumped against the toe of a dusty black boot. Dolores looked up.

Standing in front of her was an unfamiliar woman: tall and pale, with large dark eyes, she was dressed men’s style in an embroidered black shirt and close-fitting black pants. A wide-brimmed black hat sat atop her head, and at her hips were holstered a pair of guns on a black leather belt. She made a striking figure, and it took Dolores a moment to react when the woman picked up the can and held it out to her.

“Oh—very kind of you, thank you,” Dolores said, smiling politely as she accepted the can.

The woman in black didn’t reply. She just stared at Dolores, assessing and impersonal in a way that made Dolores feel uncomfortably like a specimen under glass. “Are you new to Sweetwater?” she tried.

The woman ignored the question and kept staring, shifting her gaze down and then back up in a blatant once-over. Dolores felt her cheeks heat with embarrassment and indignation, and opened her mouth in reproach.

“Cute,” the woman said, cutting Dolores off before she could speak. “Top marks to the design department.”

“The—design department?” It was so unexpected that Dolores’s anger abruptly drained away and was replaced with pure confusion. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Behavior could use some work, though.”

That didn’t make any sense either. Dolores couldn’t even tell if the woman was addressing her, or talking to herself.

“What behavior? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

The woman huffed scornfully. This was exasperating. Dolores always tried to be kind to people, particularly to newcomers, but this woman had clearly taken a dislike to her for some reason, and Dolores had better things to do than stand here and be insulted. She pursed her lips and was about to walk away, when another strange woman appeared.

“Sam, there you are! I’ve been looking all over, what are you doing out here? I can’t leave you alone for two minutes.”

The woman in black shrugged. “You were taking too long, I got bored.”

The other woman, who had brown skin and glossy black curls and was dressed in a lavish, lace-trimmed gown of bright gold silk, gave a disappointed pout. Evidently the two were friends, although they could hardly have looked more different from each other. Dolores drew back so as not to intrude, but the woman in gold noticed the movement and turned towards her.

“Oh hey, hi there.” She looked at Dolores for a moment, then glanced back at her companion. “Making friends with the locals, are we?” she asked, eyebrow raised, and then to Dolores, “What’s your name?”

“Hello,” Dolores said awkwardly. She would have preferred to slip away without any further interaction, but it would be rude to leave now. “I’m Dolores, how do you do?”

The woman in black let out a bark of laughter.

“ _Dolly_? That’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?”

“Shut up, Sam,” the woman in gold said, elbowing her friend. “Dolores, what a pretty name. I’m Charlotte, and this is Samantha. Don’t mind her, she was dropped on her head as a baby, she’s like that with everyone.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Dolores smiled hesitantly. She still didn’t know what to make of Samantha, but at least Charlotte seemed friendly enough. “Is this your first time visiting Sweetwater?”

“Oh no, I come here all the time. I love this place, it’s always such an _experience_.”

“You do?” Dolores cocked her head, puzzled. “That’s strange, I don’t remember ever seeing you here before.”

That made Charlotte laugh, for some reason. “No, I guess you wouldn’t. It’s Sam’s first time, though. I’ve been trying to convince her to join me on a trip for ages, and she finally agreed.”

“Only to get you to quit nagging me,” Samantha grumbled. “I still don’t see what the big deal is. I mean sure, it’s an impressive technical feat, especially at such scale, but so what? Considering how much we charge—“

“Come on, we literally just got here, what are you complaining about?”

“You promised me excitement. It looks like the most exciting thing to happen around here is a drunken bar fight, and I can see that at home.”

Charlotte shook her head. “Not like the bar fights here, you can’t. Anyway, Sweetwater is just the starting point, you know that. We’ll get to the good stuff, I just thought you might like to soak up a bit of local color before we head out— _if you know what I mean_.” She grinned and waggled her eyebrows mischievously.

Samantha’s nose wrinkled in distaste. “Well, you can save it, I’m not interested in fucking any robots, I don’t care how realistic they are.”

Dolores had rather lost track of the conversation by this point, but she was still paying enough attention to be shocked by such crudeness, and she stared at Samantha, appalled. Charlotte just sighed.

“You really need to learn to keep a lid on it, Sam, we’re not going to be able to get anywhere if you keep scaring people off.” She took Samantha’s arm and turned them around, tugging Samantha away in the opposite direction. “Alright, if you’re sure you’re not interested, we’d better leave her alone before she tries to have you committed. Bye Dolores, nice meeting you!” she called over her shoulder.

“Goodbye…” 

Dolores watched dumbly as the two women walked away, crossing the street and then disappearing into the Mariposa. What a strange encounter. She knew that allowances had to be made for newcomers, who had their own customs and didn’t always realize how different things were out here, but she’d never come across anyone as confusing and incomprehensible as Samantha seemed to be. Dolores couldn’t imagine how she managed to make her way in the world, if she really was like that all the time, and reflected that it was lucky that she was travelling with Charlotte, who would hopefully be able to smooth over any misunderstandings with locals and keep her out of trouble.

With that thought, Dolores dismissed the matter from her mind. She was still holding the fallen can in her hand, and she put it away now, packing it into the saddlebag and securing the flap over the top. That done, she could finally untie her horse and ride away. The day was wearing on, and she had painting to do.

  


\\\/\//

  


It was already dark when Dolores returned home that evening. She hadn't meant to stay out so late, but a family walking by the river had stumbled upon her where she was painting and watching the wild horses, and the daughter had been so fascinated by the animals that Dolores had offered to give her an impromptu riding lesson. The girl had been thrilled, and Dolores had spent the next hour or so leading her through the basics on her own gentle, well-trained mare, while the girl's parents rested in the shade and watched. Afterwards, they had asked for Dolores's help to guide them back to Sweetwater, and she had been happy to oblige, but it had delayed her enough that the sun was already setting by the time she started heading back to the ranch. She knew the way perfectly well, though, even in the rapidly deepening night, and she rode along unhurriedly, enjoying the quiet stillness and the cool fresh air.

At length the house came into view ahead of her, outlined against the sky at the top of the rise and warmly lit from inside. Her parents would chide her for coming home so late, but Dolores knew that her mother would melt instantly when she described the little girl's delight at riding about in circles with the reins clutched in her chubby fists, while her father would only shake his head indulgently and warn Dolores that she was too much of a soft touch. She smiled to herself just picturing it. 

As the path began to slope up towards the house, Dolores was pulled out of her thoughts by the sound of cattle lowing nearby. There were a several of them standing among the bushes not far from the path, and now that Dolores was paying attention, she could hear more cows, further away, all of them wandering free when they should already have been penned up for the night. It wasn't unheard of for animals to get loose through carelessness or accident, but Dolores's father would never let such a thing happen on his property. She turned her eyes back to the house, wondering and uneasy, just as the stillness of the night was shattered by the crack of a gunshot.

Dolores crested the hill at a gallop and flung herself off her horse.

"Daddy!"

She rushed over to where he lay, flat on his back on the dirt in front of the house, and fell to the ground by his side. Blood stained his shirt, and she cried out, seizing his hand, but his eyes were already empty and lifeless, staring glassily up into the night sky. Dolores felt her face crumple, and a wail rose up from her throat, just as someone grabbed her roughly from behind and pulled her away. She shrieked and struggled, but the man wouldn't let her go. Other people appeared, spilling out onto the porch; they might have said something, but Dolores didn't hear, couldn't focus on anything but the sight of her father lying there in the moonlight.

She found herself being dragged into the barn and thrown to the floor. The familiar musty smell of the place filled her lungs as she panted for breath, struggling to think straight as the man who had brought her here closed the door and turned around. He grinned and started unbuckling his belt.

Fear gripped Dolores's heart. This man, one of her father's murderers, was preparing to assault her, and she didn't want it to happen, but what could she possibly do to stop it? There was nobody around who would be willing to help, and she was so much smaller and weaker than him, powerless, unarmed. Wait, no—not unarmed. Dolores stared at the gun in her hand. It must be her father's; she must have taken it as she knelt by his body, some unconscious part of her mind taking precautions against danger even as the rest of her collapsed in grief. Sitting up from the pile of straw on which she'd fallen, Dolores raised the gun and pointed it at the man in front of her.

He chuckled. 

"Well, well. You're spirited, aren't you? I like that in a girl."

He carefully moved his hands away from his belt and took a slow step forward. Dolores jerked the gun, keeping it aimed as straight as she could, though her hand shook and her whole body was trembling with tension. She tried to pull the trigger, but her finger seemed locked in place, frozen.

"Having some trouble?" the man asked, low and mocking. He stepped forward again.

Dolores gritted her teeth. He didn't think she was going to shoot him, but she would, she _had_ to. The gun was solid and heavy in her hand, she could feel the hard edge of the trigger, she just needed to curl her finger a little tighter...

" _Kill him_ ," whispered a voice. That was all Dolores needed; she pulled the trigger, once, twice, and blood spurted from the man's throat as he staggered back with a surprised look on his face, then fell to the floor and lay still. Gasping, Dolores pushed herself to her feet and burst out of the barn.

Her mother was still inside the house; Dolores could hear her screaming. She ran over, and through the open doorway she saw a man raise a shotgun to his shoulder and shoot it. The screaming stopped.

She backed away from the house, hand clutched over her mouth in horror. Someone moved towards her out of the shadows of the porch, another one of the bandits. He looked familiar, Dolores thought dully. A newcomer—she’d seen him coming off the train in Sweetwater earlier that day.

"Hey, you!" he yelled, "Get back here!" 

The man reached for his gun. Dolores turned and ran for her horse, mounting and riding away as fast as she could, without sparing a single glance back. She fled from the house, pursued by a brief scatter of gunshots, and then kept going, riding blindly across the open pastures with no thought to where she was headed, driven only by a desperate urgent need to get _away_. 

She reached the uncleared woodland that bordered the ranch, and plunged into it. The darkness beneath the trees was too thick for her eyes to penetrate, so she slowed down and let her horse find a path as they continued onwards. The night was still and silent once more, save for the rustle of their passage through the undergrowth and Dolores's own choked sobs. The bandits hadn’t sent anyone after her, and now, in the absence of any immediate danger, there was nothing left for her to do, nothing to think about but the fact that her parents were dead. Her mother, her father, both gone, and she would never be able to see them, never be able to speak to them ever again. It wasn't fair, her mind protested, it wasn't right; her parents had been good, kind people, and those men had killed them without a second thought, like their lives meant nothing at all. Nothing but a couple of inconvenient obstacles in their search for, what—money? Entertainment? She would have been angry if she didn't feel so hollow. 

She kept going for what felt like a long time. The tears stopped coming after a while, though her eyes still felt hot and scratchy. When her horse grew tired, Dolores slipped down from her back and walked alongside instead. She was pretty tired herself, between the physical exertion and the emotional strain, and she probably would have missed the light glimmering through the trees if not for her horse, who snuffled loudly and tossed her head at the scent of smoke on the air. There was a campfire up ahead and to the left of them. That meant warmth; safety; people. Dolores headed towards it.

She stumbled out into a clearing, blinking against the sudden brightness of the firelight. 

"What the—is that... Dolly?"

There was a woman standing in front of Dolores, staring at her. Samantha, she remembered, and then exhaustion took hold and she collapsed into unconsciousness.


	3. Chapter 3

Dolores drifted slowly out of a deep, lingering sleep. The sun was pleasantly warm on her face, and birds were singing somewhere close by. She opened her eyes, squinting at first against the brightness, and saw blue sky and spreading branches overhead. How curious. 

As the fog began to clear from her head, more details seeped in. She was outdoors, lying wrapped in a blanket on the ground. When she sat up, she found that her muscles were stiff and sore with exertion, and beneath the blanket she was still fully dressed, right down to her boots. What had happened yesterday to lead to her sleeping outside like this? She remembered riding to Sweetwater in the morning, then down to the river in the afternoon, and then— _oh_. It all came back in a jumble of nightmare impressions, her father's empty eyes, the smell of straw dust, a scream cut short. There had been a long ride through dark woods, and a campfire, and—

"Morning, dollface." 

Samantha settled down on the grass next to Dolores with a tin mug of coffee, looking bright-eyed and chipper. "So, what's the story?"

Dolores stared. Her throat was tight and her eyes prickled with tears, sorrow and pain and horror and loss all crashing together in a storm of anguish, and yet here was this newcomer woman sitting in the sunshine and drinking her coffee without a care in the world. It seemed absurd, impossible.

Samantha made an impatient noise, and Dolores realized that she had been asked a question. Making an effort to concentrate, she ran the words back through her head. 

“What story?”

"You burst out of the woods in the middle of the night and collapsed in my arms,” Samantha reminded her. “Ring any bells? It was a nice scene, very dramatic, but what's it all about? Me and Charlotte already signed up for this bounty-hunting gig"—she jerked her head at where Charlotte stood some distance away, gold dress exchanged for a shirt and pants similar to Samantha's, talking to a grizzled-looking man whom Dolores vaguely recognized as a local from Sweetwater—"so if you've got some alternate quest you want to take us on, you'd better sell it."

From this, Dolores gathered that Samantha wanted to know what had happened to her last night. She hesitated a moment—Samantha didn't strike her as a particularly sympathetic listener—but the urge to tell someone, to share and perhaps ease some small part of her pain, was just too strong.

"Bandits," she said softly, lowering her eyes. "A gang of bandits attacked my family's ranch. They hurt my parents, killed them. A man took me and tried to, to—“ She broke off and shook her head, continuing, “but I got away, and then I ran, as far as I could." It sounded so neat and simple, put into words like that. "I didn't have anywhere to go, I wasn't thinking, I just had to get away. If I hadn't seen your fire, I guess I would have kept going all night."

Samantha hummed thoughtfully. 

"Okay, so you're traumatised by the tragic death of your parents—not exactly reinventing the wheel here, are they? But what's next? You don't strike me as the violent avenger type."

"What's next?" Dolores looked up, startled as much by Samantha’s blunt reaction as by the question itself. "I don't know." 

She had been so consumed by her immediate feelings of shock and grief that it hadn’t occurred to her to think about the future, and only now, prompted by Samantha’s words, did the practical implications of her situation begin to sink in. Dolores had lived on the ranch with her parents all her life; with them gone, she would have to make a new life for herself. How, though? What could she do? She had nothing to her name but a horse and the clothes on her back. Legally, the ranch ought to be hers, but that counted for little when the place had been taken over by thieves and murderers. Maybe if she sought help from the sheriff in Sweetwater, or got word to Teddy, maybe they could drive off the bandits and she could go back and—Dolores shuddered. No. She couldn’t face going back to the ranch, just the thought of it filled her with horror. Too much had happened there; it was tainted now, and it would be a long time before she would be able to contemplate stepping foot there again. Better to go somewhere else, somewhere new…

"Having fun?" asked Charlotte, interrupting Dolores's thoughts. She had finished speaking with the man, and stood looking down at Dolores and Samantha with an eyebrow raised. "So, have you figured out what her deal is?"

Samantha shrugged. "Bad men killed her parents and she ran away. Dunno what's supposed to happen next, though."

"Well, say your goodbyes, we've gotta get moving if we're gonna make it to Las Mudas by lunchtime. There's a great little cantina there, we can fill up on melted cheese and margaritas before we go bandit-hunting, sound good?"

"See, now _that's_ a pitch," Samantha told Dolores. "Sure, just give me a minute and I'll be ready to go." She gulped down the last of her coffee and stood up. 

Dolores scrambled to her feet as well. 

"You're going to Las Mudas?" 

She had never visited the town herself, but some of the ranch hands had grown up there, and they used to tell her stories about the place when she was a young girl. If she had to go somewhere, Las Mudas seemed as likely a place as any for her to make a fresh start, or at least to gather her bearings while she tried to decide what she ought to do next.

"Yeah?" Samantha eyed her doubtfully. "Why, you wanna come with?"

"Could I?"

Samantha and Charlotte exchanged a glance. 

"Alright, I guess you can tag along," Samantha said grudgingly. “Only as far as Las Mudas though, I didn't come here to babysit some orphan farmgirl."

"Thank you. I won't be any trouble, I promise." 

That was her first step worked out, at least. It was relief to have some sense of purpose and direction, even if only for the next few hours, and Dolores immediately set about making herself useful, shaking out her blanket and folding it neatly to be packed away. 

On the ground next to where she had slept, she discovered the gun that she had used the night before, in the barn. She hadn’t realized that she had brought it with her. Looking at it raised troubling memories, and she was half-tempted to leave it where it lay, but at the same time, she had so few things linking her to her previous life. She might be starting on a new path now, but she couldn’t let go of her past entirely, nor did she want to, and she eventually decided to bring the gun with her, unloading the bullets and sticking it in her belt.

The others had already packed up most of the camp, and it didn’t take long for them to finish putting the last few things away. The man they were travelling with, a bounty hunter by the name of Holden, grumbled a little when he heard that Dolores would be joining their party, but he didn’t try to argue with the newcomers’ decision. They saddled up and set out, riding at an easy pace through scrubby woods that gradually gave way to open grassland, the sun beating down on them as it climbed higher in the sky. Samantha and Charlotte chattered away companionably, while Holden offered occasional anecdotes about past conflicts in the area or pointed out a hawk flying overhead, and Dolores followed silently behind. 

She needed to think about what she was going to do when they got to Las Mudas, but her mind was churning with agitation and she found it difficult to focus on a single train of thought. Any time an idea began to coalesce, she would sigh and find herself brooding over the events of the night before instead, reliving the memories with a sort of hopeless longing, like maybe if she did it enough times, the events would turn out differently. It was so hard to accept that her parents were dead, and that there was nothing she could do to change it. Without them, she felt lost, untethered; her very sense of identity and how the world worked were shaken and unsteady. Compared to that, the problems of finding money and occupation seemed petty and unimportant, for all that she tried to convince herself otherwise.

She still hadn’t gotten anywhere by the time they reached Las Mudas. The church bells were tolling noon as they tied up their horses, and then Samantha and Charlotte walked off to the cantina together and Holden went in the other direction to hunt down a lead on the outlaw they were looking for, leaving Dolores standing by herself in the main square, adrift and uncertain. 

Well, there was nothing for it now, she couldn’t just stand here all day. Gathering her spirits, she chose a direction and started walking, with the vague idea that exploring the town would give her a better sense of what opportunities were available. 

It was a pleasant enough town, at least. The buildings were all of adobe, not wooden like in Sweetwater, and cool to the touch, despite the midday heat. Goats and chickens wandered loose in the streets, and all the townsfolk seemed to know each other, filling the air with a lively cacophony of voices. This noise began to die down as the afternoon wore on and people disappeared indoors to eat and rest, and when Dolores finished her circuit of the town and came back to the main square, she found it almost deserted.

The smells of fresh bread and cooking meat came wafting out of an open window, making Dolores’s mouth water and reminding her that she hadn't eaten anything the previous night, nor anything that morning except for an apple. She had more food in her saddlebags and a little money besides, but she thought it best to conserve her limited supplies for the time being, since she didn’t know how long she would need to make them last. If she couldn’t afford to eat, she could at least drink, though; there was a pump at the corner of the square, set over a wide stone pool. The water tasted wonderfully sweet and cold, after the exertion of the morning’s ride and the long night before that, and it went some way towards easing the emptiness of her belly.

When she had finished drinking, she glanced up, refreshed, and noticed a young girl with thick black braids sitting on the lip of the pool, swinging her feet and scratching patterns on the ground with a stick. There were only a few other people around, and none of them were paying her any attention; it looked like she'd been left there by herself. 

"Good morning," Dolores said, approaching her with a friendly smile. “What are you doing there? Are you waiting for your mama?” The girl ignored her, not lifting her eyes from the ground. Shy, probably. She didn't seem bothered by Dolores's presence, though, and it was nice to have someone to talk to, if only a child. "I just arrived here," she confided. "It's a lovely town, isn't it? Is this your home?"

The girl shook her head and kept scratching at the ground with her stick.

"No? Where are you from?"

She raised her head, then, and looked straight at Dolores. Her eyes were black, and she was older than Dolores had first thought.

"I'm from the same place as you," she said. "Don't you remember?"

 _Remember_...

Images flashed dizzyingly through Dolores's mind: a white church, a graveyard, the girl, her hair flying loose as she ran down the street of an unfamiliar town. It was all over in a moment, and Dolores gasped and sank to her knees. Where had that come from? She _didn't_ remember any of those things, they had just appeared in her mind, breath-takingly vivid and completely disconnected from anything she had ever known in real life. 

They were gone now, though. All Dolores could see was the ground in front of her, the scratches that the girl had made in the dirt. No, not scratches—Dolores blinked, and the lines resolved into a drawing, a series of broken circles with a stick figure of a person at the center. It was a simple design, but there was something compelling about it, drawing Dolores in, further and further, the longer she looked at it…

"Ma'am?"

The voice startled Dolores back to awareness. Time had passed without her realizing it; the girl with the braids had disappeared, and there was an unfamiliar man standing over her. She rose slowly to her feet.

"We got word that a girl went missing from the Abernathy ranch," the man told her. "Is that where you're from?"

Missing? Dolores frowned at him, puzzled. There was a sheriff's badge pinned to his vest, and his voice was calm and authoritative, but what he was saying didn’t make any sense.

"Come along, your daddy must be worried about you," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder to lead her away.

Dolores jerked away from him. What this man was telling her, that her father was still alive, that she had somehow imagined everything that had happened last night—it was impossible, it simply couldn’t be. Could it? Her mind may have been wandering earlier, but surely that was _because_ of all the trouble she’d been through, not the other way around. She could picture her father so clearly, lying on the ground in front of the house, the creeping dark stain across his chest, his pale, glassy eyes. And more than that, she could still feel the pain of his loss, a soul-deep ache that couldn’t possibly be imagined. She didn't know who this man was or why he was lying to her, but that much she was certain of. 

"My father is dead," she told him. "I'm not going back."

The man's expression turned flat, and he grabbed her arm. Dolores struggled, trying to break his grip and yank her arm back so that she could run away, but he was stronger than she was, and held her easily. She couldn’t give up though, she couldn’t let him take her, so she continued scrabbling at his fingers, and when she failed to pry them off her wrist, she kicked him hard in the shin. That got a reaction, at least; his face spasmed in anger, and he dragged her in closer, raising his free hand to strike her.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?"

Someone appeared from behind Dolores and shoved the man in the chest. It was Samantha. She glared at the man and reached warningly for her holstered guns. The man looked at her for a moment, then let go of Dolores and raised both hands in a pacifying gesture.

"Just helping a lost traveller, nothing for you to worry about," he said.

Samantha scoffed. "Yeah, looked like you were being real helpful. Dolores, are you lost?"

" _No_ ," Dolores said, rubbing at her arm.

"You heard her." 

Samantha looked at the man expectantly, but he shook his head, unconvinced. 

"She doesn't belong here,” he insisted. “I can't allow her to go wandering around all alone."

"Oh, for—She’s not alone, okay, she's with me. Satisfied?"

He considered the two of them, Samantha standing defensively in front and Dolores eyeing him warily over her shoulder. Slowly, his posture relaxed and his stern expression faded to polite neutrality. 

"Well, that's alright then. My apologies, ladies, I didn't realize." He backed away, simpering and tipping his hat. "Y'all have a nice day."

"Nice day, my ass," Samantha muttered as she watched him turn and walk away. When he was gone, she looked at Dolores and made a face. "Ugh, I guess I'm stuck with you now. Come on, then."

She turned on her heel, heading for the cantina, and Dolores hurried after her, bewildered but grateful. Charlotte was already seated inside; she spotted Samantha coming through the doorway and started to smile, but stiffened when she saw Dolores.

"Don't be mad, okay," Samantha said, dropping into a chair. "There was some asshole trying to, like, kidnap her and cart her back to Sweetwater, it was really gross, and he wouldn't let her go unless she was with a guest, so I said she was with me to get him to leave her alone. Can you blame me?"

" _Yes_ ," Charlotte said. "You should have just let him take her, that's how this place works. They'll wipe her, put her back, and let her start over again, and _we_ can get on with our trip. We're supposed to be going on a bounty hunt, you want her coming with us? I thought you said you didn't want to babysit?"

Samantha waved her hand. "It'll be fine, she can take care of herself. Look, she's even got her own gun!" she said, gesturing at the pistol stuck through Dolores's belt. 

"Can you even use that thing?" Charlotte asked dubiously.

Dolores thought back to the barn: the pressure of metal beneath her finger, blood spurting across the straw, a man dead at her own hands. 

“Yes,” she said, “I know how to use it. Although I’d prefer not to.”

"I mean, you probably won't actually need to shoot anyone, me and Charlotte can take of that ourselves. You can just hang back and, I don't know, look after the horses or something. You know about horses, right?"

Charlotte rolled her eyes. "She doesn't want to be your lackey, Sam."

" _Our_ lackey," Samantha corrected her, "and what other options does she have? She might as well stick with us and make herself useful."

"Well, Dolores, how's that for an offer?" Charlotte asked. "You wanna play stable boy while we hunt down a criminal for money?"

Dolores considered it. She never would have imagined herself working as anybody's servant a few days ago, but she needed to find some kind of work, and caring for horses was indeed something that she knew how to do. It was the other parts of the offer that gave her pause. She didn’t know the details of man whose bounty they were trying to collect, but it sounded dangerous, and she had no desire to be thrown into another violent situation after everything she had just been through. Samantha seemed to think that she would be able to stay safe and out of harm’s way, but that was the other thing: could Dolores trust these women? She certainly didn’t understand them. Charlotte had been friendly enough when they first met, but now treated Dolores as an inconvenience to be rid of, and Samantha had never made any pretence of friendliness to begin with. Even when helping Dolores escape from that man just now, she had remained brusque and ungracious. 

Of course, she _had_ helped her, when she could easily have walked away instead, and they had taken her in last night, too, when Dolores had been lost and exhausted and alone. However off-putting their manners might be, they did seem to be decent, honourable people, which might not be true of others in Las Mudas, should Dolores choose to stay behind. And she didn’t _want_ to stay, either. She had been prepared to look for a position here because it had seemed like her best option, but the idea of continuing onwards, travelling further—that struck something in her imagination and lit her with the desire to keep going.

"Alright," she said. "Yes. I'll come with you, if you'll take me."

Samantha clapped her hands together. "Great! It's settled, then," she declared.

Charlotte sighed. "Okay, fine. But if you want to keep her, she's your responsibility, don’t expect me to look after her."

"Yeah, yeah, puppies aren't just for Christmas, I know." Samantha turned to Dolores and grinned. "Hey, have you had lunch? C'mon, let's get you something to eat and then we can go and get you kitted out."

Samantha was as good as her word, buying Dolores lunch at the cantina and then leading her on a tour of practically every store in Las Mudas, and in very short order Dolores found herself the new owner of a blue gingham shirt, a pair of buckskin pants, a tooled leather holster, and a full complement of travelling supplies. She kept trying to insist that she didn’t need all of these things, but Samantha waved away her protests without the slightest concern for the expense. Dolores appreciated it, of course, but she did find it rather baffling; she hadn’t expected such generosity, and didn’t know what had prompted it or whether it was likely to continue.

When they arrived back at the main square with their purchases, Holden was waiting for them with fresh information about the man they were looking for, a bandit named Slim Miller. Apparently he and his gang had attacked a homestead some twenty miles away; an awful event for the family concerned, but Holden treated it as good news, since it meant their quarry would probably be staying put for at least a day or two. 

"We ought to be able to cover most of the distance before nightfall," he told them, marking out the route on a roughly sketched map, "and then we can hit them in the morning. With any luck, they'll all be asleep or hungover, and we can take them down without anyone getting hurt."

Samantha pouted. “No one getting hurt? That’s not much fun, is it?”

“Well, if you want some extra excitement, you could always knock on the door and wake them up first,” Charlotte suggested sweetly.

“That was a joke,” she added, in response to Dolores’s horrified expression.

Dolores wasn’t reassured. She had already known that Charlotte and Samantha were on a bounty hunt, but earlier that knowledge had been safely vague and theoretical. Now, faced with a concrete plan, she found that she wasn’t as comfortable as she thought with the idea of her new employers going out of their way to attack a group of violent criminals.

“Are you sure you want to go through with this?” she asked. “I don’t like it, it sounds so dangerous.”

“Too bad, it’s not up to you,” Charlotte told her. “Right, Sam?”

“Of course, that’s the whole reason I came here. We’re definitely doing this.” Samantha patted Dolores’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll be fine, I promise.” 

The discussion moved on to more practical details, and then they were on the road again, heading south across dusty plains.

Dolores was still anxious about the situation, but Charlotte and Samantha were set on their plan and there didn’t seem to be much she could do but hope and pray that everything turned out alright. To keep herself from fretting, she tried to follow Charlotte and Samantha’s conversation as they rode. She had been too caught up in her own thoughts that morning to pay much attention to the others, but now that they were going to be travelling together for a while, she wanted to get to know them better.

It was no good, though. The conversation was so incomprehensible that it might as well have been a foreign language, and indeed, many of the words they used were completely unfamiliar to Dolores. She ventured to ask, at one point, if they could explain to her what they were talking about, but Charlotte only looked annoyed at the interruption, and Samantha’s response was a blithe, “You wouldn’t understand.” They went back to laughing about something together, and Dolores was left to ride along in frustrated ignorance.

It was only to be expected, she supposed. They were her employers, not her friends, and if they didn’t wish to interact with her more than that relationship required, that was their prerogative. Still, it made for a tedious, lonely journey, and she was relieved when the sun finally started sinking and Holden called a halt for the day.

They set up camp and got a fire going, and while the others started preparing dinner, Dolores led the horses down to a stream near their campsite. It was peaceful here in the deepening dusk, surrounded by the rushing sound of the water and the warm, sturdy bulk of the horses. She wandered idly between them, stroking their flanks and murmuring gentle nothings as they drank from the stream, and let her mind drift.

She stirred at the sound of rustling from the bushes behind her, and Samantha emerged a moment later, carrying an empty waterskin. She glanced briefly at Dolores as she walked to the edge of the stream and knelt down to fill the waterskin. When that was done, she stood up, came over to Dolores, and snapped her fingers in her face.

“Hello? You awake in there?”

Dolores blinked at her, startled.

“Yes? Why, is there something wrong?”

Samantha examined her with a critical eye, but was apparently satisfied with what she saw. “Just checking you didn’t crash on us,” she explained. “You were being all still and quiet, it’s kinda creepy.” 

Oh. Dolores had thought that Samantha and Charlotte _wanted_ her to be quiet, but not all the time, apparently? She didn’t think Samantha would respond well to being asked for clarification about how she should behave, though.

“I suppose I’ve had a lot on my mind,” she said diplomatically.

Samantha snorted a laugh. 

“Good one,” she said, looking deeply amused. “Come on, Dolly, enlighten me: what is it that you’ve been so busy thinking about?”

“My parents, for one thing,” Dolores answered, somewhat defensively; there was a mocking note to Samantha’s question that she disliked. “What I’m going to do without them, who I am without them. If it’s a good idea for me to be coming with you and Charlotte, and what I’ll do and where I’ll go, after you leave.” 

She broke off there, although those were only the biggest of the questions that had been troubling her all day. Samantha’s amusement had quickly faded when Dolores mentioned her parents, and now she was looking at Dolores with a newfound air of consideration.

“Huh. That… makes sense.”

“Yes?” Dolores wasn’t sure why Samantha seemed to find this observation so intriguing. “I did tell you what happened, you remember. Surely anyone would be anxious in my situation.”

Samantha nodded. “Yeah, sure, of course. I just didn’t realize you were so, you know, detailed: existential angst, that’s pretty high-level stuff. I probably owe Charlotte an apology.”

Dolores sighed. She was beginning to get used to Samantha’s impenetrable musings, but it was tiring all the same, and when she talked like this, it made Dolores feel edgy, off-balance. To cover her confusion, she busied herself in gathering the horses’ lead ropes. They had had their fill of water, for the moment, and she wanted to go back to the campsite while there was still some light left. Samantha grabbed two of the leads herself, and they started picking their way through the long grass and bushes that grew thickly along the stream bank.

“So you really don’t know what you’re going to do now?” Samantha asked. “Apart from tagging along with us, I mean. You don’t have any goals of your own, anywhere you want to go?”

Dolores shrugged. She didn’t understand Samantha’s sudden interest, but at least she understood what she was saying, this time. “Nowhere in particular, no. I used to dream sometimes of going somewhere far away, someplace beyond”—she gestured vaguely—“all this. That was only an idle dream, though. I never would have left my parents behind, if they hadn’t—I wouldn’t have left. But now that I have… I think I’d like to see more of the world.” The ground was becoming more open now, away from the stream, and Dolores could spare a glance to look at Samantha without risking her footing. “What’s it like where you’re from?”

“What, New York? You’re not thinking of going there, are you?” Samantha laughed.

“You’re from New York?” Dolores’s eyes widened. “Oh, that must be wonderful. People say it’s the greatest city in the world.”

“Eh. It has its good points.” 

“Although I suppose it is a little further than I was thinking of travelling,” Dolores admitted wistfully. 

“No kidding.” Samantha smiled. “Although, who knows, maybe I’ll take you there someday.” 

It wasn’t a serious offer, of course, but a nice thought, all the same.

“So what is it like, then?” Dolores asked again.

“Why do you want to know, if you’re not planning to go there?”

“I’m just curious.”

“You are, aren’t you?” Samantha didn’t sound annoyed about it though, just thoughtful. “It’s big. Noisy. Full of all kinds of people, more than you can imagine—“

“Hey Sam, is that you? What took you so long?”

Dolores hadn’t realized they were so close to the campsite already. Charlotte was sitting stretched out on a blanket in front of the fire, while Holden bent over it with a pot, stirring some kind of stew.

“Just having a little chat with Dolores,” Samantha replied. She passed the horses’ leads to Dolores and went to settle down next to Charlotte. “I have _got_ to go visit the Behavior Lab when we get out of here, I had no idea there was so much complexity in the hosts’ programming, it’s crazy.”

“It’s a waste of space, if you ask me,” Charlotte said. “But sure, we can arrange a visit.”

Dolores quietly led the horses aside and tied them up as the two women continued talking. She stood there for a moment, watching them from the shadows at the edge of the firelight. She had had some misgivings about throwing her lot in with these women, but they could both be quite pleasant when they wanted to be. Perhaps things would go more smoothly in the future, as they grew used to each other, Dolores reflected. Perhaps, with time, they might even become friends after all.


End file.
